An Update

I have been so preoccupied lately with so many other things (it is truly a pity that real life gets in the way of our real fun!) that I have totally neglected not only this blog but wargaming in general.  But let's get caught up on things, shall we?

I have settled on a set of rules.  I will be using a wonderful set called When Empires Clash! by Bob Condroy.  They are based primarily on the old Joe Morschauser rules and I am actually using a 1-inch gridded board!  That's right, I said a gridded board.  there is a wonderful simplicity about a gridded board that one just doesn't see with a hexed board or a plain board.  It is a return to the wargaming in its heyday.  I am also using 10mm figures.  Most of the British figures I am using are from the excellent line by Perrin Miniatures.  Literally everythig else are pandraken Miniatures.  The basic infantry stand is 1.0"x.5" upon which are mounted three figures.  This represents an infantry company  Cavalry are mounted two per stand and artillery is ounted one gun per stand and both of those are mounted on 1" square stands.  My basing material are 0.8mm wood stands from Litko which have rounded corners.  They are really nice stands!  Terrain elevations are achieved by using 6mm wood squares again from litko (actually they are 3mm bases glued two high).  Roads are 0.8mm squares painted brown and water squares are painted blue.  You will see all this in pictures that I will post.

I have a full division of British troops composed of three infantry brigades and a cavalry brigade.  As of this moment the entire division is based in Kismet.  I will talk more about their dispositions i a future post.  For this moment, i just wanted to get this blog active again!

It’s All a Matter of Wells

Excerpted from Anecdotes From the Mafrican Wars, 1885-1890

Colonel Alderson wiped his face as he read yet again his orders from General Bartleby-Jones. He understood them easily enough but he wondered about the way he would execute them. He and his senior officers sat around the large intricately carved padauk table and studied the map. It was a long march from Aswan to Acre, straight west across vast plains with sparse water to satisfy a brigade-sized force. It was a far shorter march to Aswan from Efurti. The Imperial Navy had quietly secured Efurti several weeks ago and they reported it to be a quiet coastal city. The local population was indifferent to the occupants of their government house and seemed content to go about their lives.

The colonel could not directly consult with the force commander because General Bartleby-Jones had already left for Kismet where he could arrange personally for the re-arrival of the foreign legations himself. He had explained that his presence was necessary to ensure the prestige of the Imperial government. Colonel Alderson waved to an orderly and whispered to him to bring the Naval force commander to the meeting as soon as possible.

“Gentlemen,” between puffs on his pipe, “I have requested the presence of the Navy to arrange transport of the brigade from here to Efurti, and from there we strike across the desert to Aswan! There are four wells between Efurti and Aswan and by God’s grace we will find them clean and clear. Prepare your men for action!”

As it turned out, the naval transports were already sailing east back to Acre from the capture of Kismet so within several weeks the 3rd Brigade embarked and arrived soon after at Efurti. Colonel Alderson wasted little time at Efurti and was soon afterward at the head of his brigade and moving north into the desert in a long column aimed at Aswan.

From the moment the head of the column left the city gates of Efurti they were under harassment from native warbands. The native leaders did not dare risk a major engagement at this time as their own forces were not yet joined together. The local leader, Shiek Naji el Afridi, was gathering his warriors on the plains before the gates of Aswan and already several banners had arrived. Some of those he sent out to raid the Imperial column wherever they could. Shiek Afridi was a wily own warrior who had seen service under the former Shad regime and he knew the weaknesses of the Imperial forces. His own green flag soldiers he would keep close to him and it fell to the red flag warriors to lead the first strikes on the Imperial soldiers.

The morning of the third day out of Efurti, the Imperial column arrived at the first well, Wady Hafar. This was a small collection of mud huts and palm trees which provided a small degree of shelter for the weary soldiers of the 3rd Brigade. Though they had suffered few casualties from the harassing native warriors and there appeared to be little danger up to this point, the colonel thought it most prudent to leave a company at the well to hold and protect the supply line back to Efurti. The defense of the supply line was assigned to LTC J. Cromer’s 30th Regiment.

The column then proceeded on to the halfway point, the little village of Kera. Here the column rested several days as supplies were built up and the troops were rested. From there it was on to Abu Fatmeh. Then on again to the final well before arriving at Aswan, the Terai Wells. As the column progressed it was noted that the route behind them back to Efurti was quiet and uncontested. Yet the closer they marched to Aswan, the more intense the opposition grew. But Colonel Alderson never lost faith and confidence in his men and confidently but carefully he set out on the final march to Aswan before the rising of the sun. The route had been reconnoitered by his infantry patrols and he was well aware of the terrain between himself and the tent city that now grew up outside the walls of Aswan.

Though there was no moon, the countless stars above them lit their way in an eiry cold silver light and the dark khaki columns floated across the pale blue sea of sand with Imperial precision. The low crunch of their boots was barely audible and even the typical noise of the artillery seemed muffled in the sand.

As the sun started to lighten the eastern sky to their right, the soldiers looked down from their low ridge on the thrilling, awe-inspiring sight below them. There were hundreds of colorful tents set randomly across the plain crowded around the city gates. Vari-colored banners flew from every tower of the city and the silence from below informed them they had achieved their surprise.

“By God, we’ve done it Sir!” an aide softly shouted to the colonel. The colonel just “hmppphed” and ordered out patrols to quietly assure him of that surprise. Word came back that the native sentries were as yet unaware of their presence. As the sun broke the plane of the earth, the soldiers rose to their places and the artillerymen stood eagerly to their guns.

Colonel Alderson surveyed the scene yet again through his glass. He leaned to the right and told his small staff, “I do believe it is time to wake them up.” A staff officer made the signal to the artillery and the early morning serenity of the Aswan morning was destroyed by a rousing blast from C Battery of the 1st Royal Artillery. The shells whined their way to the enemy camp and exploded among the cramped tents. One shell exploded in the right turret of the city gate.scattering debris and more devastation down on the tents. The rapid fire volleys of artillery fire killed dozens of warriors in the opening seconds of the fusillade and caused hundreds to erupt from their tents like angry ants. More were killed as they ran aimlessly around among the exploding tents. By the time their leaders finally restored some order, upwards of a hundred were already lying dead on the sand.

But these were not levy warriors. They were battle-hardened warriors who now sought to wrest control of the fight from the Imperial army. Those closest to the outer rim of tents launched themselves at the Imperial line to give time to their comrades to organize themselves. LTC Winston Barnett, commander of the 12th Infantry saw their intent and angled his regiment’s line to provide maximum firepower to be thrown against the wildly advancing tribesman. The result was exactly as anticipated. Valiantly the warriors launched themselves with warcries against the Imperial firepower which cut them to pieces. The withering volleys of the rifles was too much to bear and with disgust the Shiekh watched his warriors flee from the killing blasts. When their panic spread to the rest of his warriors the route was complete and the Shiekh found himself forced to rush from the city to rally his fleeing warriors. He noted that the Imperial firepower had increased in effectiveness since the last time he had faced them. Even as he fled the city he was formulating new tactics for the new threat.

My Wargaming Theory

I wanted to take a little bit of time up front here and explain the type of game and the look and feel of the game I am striving to create.  I am most comfortable in a very structured world so it therefore follows that I prefer using a hex-gridded wargame board.  My current board uses 1.5" hexes and is a felt game board I purchased from Hotzmats (http://www.hotzmats.com/).  I have two versions of hex mats:  one with a flat side up and the other with a corner up).  I picked 1.5" hexes because a 1-inch square stand fits perfectly inside it.

I also wanted to be able to use a sort of modular terrain capability.  So I purchased from Litko (http://www.litkoaero.com/) a hole bunch of 3mm thick wooden hex bases.  Now, 3mm doesn't do much even for 10mm figures, so I glued two of them together which gives me some perfect 6mm hex-shaped elevations also in a 1.5" hex!  They also have paper-thin material (I think it is 0.8mm) and I spray painted some blue (for rivers) and some I painted tan (for roads).  I made up a hundred elevation hexes (spraypainted green) and I use the small 2'x3' hex mat so I have more than enough terrain hexes.  This lets me fight some pretty terrain-challebged battles or use a lot of elevations.  With this system I have total flexibility in setting up any battlefield I wish.  It also lets me set up a battlefield repeatedly if I ever wish to.

So there is my hex mat and my terrain pieces.  The third piece was to settle on miniatures to use.  The use of such a small board pretty much precludes using 20mm or larger figures.  That was my ow decision and certainly others may think different.  You will find that the figure actually used is totally irrelevant anyway as the game rules define the unit and not the figures.  Inistially I decided to go wi th 15mm figures and I shopped around and settles on Old Glory 15's.  They make some nice figures an I raised a whole bunch of jakhi-clad British soldiers.  The problem was that kakhi British did not really excite me as much as I had hoped.  The movie "Zulu" kept haunting meso I knew I had to do something else.

Then I happened upon the 10mm figures and put out a couple orders to see what they looked like.  The first figures I saw were from Perrin Miniatures that I bought through Strange Cargo Miniatures (http://www.strangecargogames.com/) and I fell in love with them!  They are the perfect British colonial soldier regardless of scale.  On a 1-inch square stand, which is a company, I can put 8 figures and for me that looks like a company.  Cavlry is mounted 3 to a stand and artillery is one gun per stand.  Remember that I only have one stand size, a 1-inch stand.  Again, structure and consistency are big things to me.

So now I had a hex mat, terrain, and figures to gith with.  But I had no place to fight!  My good friend, Larry Casey with whom I have been wargaming with since 1968, was also looking around for a good map to use.  It was right at that time that we noticed on the new Jack Scruby miniatures site Historifigs (http://historifigs.com/), another fantastic miniatures provider, had just reprinted Jack Scruby's old map of Mafrica upon which he had fought most of his vaunted colonial campaigns back in the 1960.s and 1970's.  So of course our decision was now made!  We both purchased the map and yet another piece was in place!

I had decided to do my campaigning in the southeastern part of Mafrica and launched my campaign by assaulting the mighty fortress city of Kismet.  Instantly though I had another problem.  My setup has made Kismet and the surrounding areas of the Debara River to be much like Mahdist territory but the only natives made by Perrin were Zulus.  So I started to look around for a solution.  And I found Panedraken Miniatures which solved all my problems.  And the beautiful thing is that they fit in rather nicely with my Perrin figures!  The height is right though they tend to be a little more robust than Perrin but on the field they work just fine.  To get the hoped for native mob look I found I could not mount 8 natives to a stand so I settles on 6 figures.  They are mounted in a mob and look pretty good (I will soon post some pictures).  I also decided to mount teh inevitable askari troops 6 to a stand only to distinguish them from the British.  I will talk about my Kismeti army in a later entry as they are my favorite troops of my whole collection.

I also wanted to put together a legations force in Kismet for something to do later so I have scrapped together a force of Perrin french sailors, Royal Navy sailors, and this led me to quite a collection of troops including a full force of Americans I haven't yet decided what to do with but I have them.  And if you ever look at the Mafrica map you will see all sorts of possibilities.  I will be posting a lot of documentation about the Mafrican continent in the days to come.

Here is a picture of a test battle just to give you a startying picture of what things look like:

Well, I will continue this in a later entry.  I hope this helps lay things out!

The Arrival of the 17th Lancers at Kismet

After a considerable delay while in transit from England, the 17th Lancers have arrived in Kismet to take their place alongside the Dragoon Guards thus completing the Imperial Cavalry Brigade.

The figures are 10mm Zulu War figures from Perrin.

An Introduction

Welcome to the ongoing colonial adventures on the continent of mafrica.  Mafrica is an excellent place to conduct colonial campaigns!  A long time ago, Jack Scruby created this map for his own use and it is now available (see my links).

It is hoped that this blog will provide us a way to have some fun in documenting our world and putting our battles and campaign in some sort of context.  There will be articles to explain some of the history of the continent and depict the place in Mafrican history of El Shad, the greatest Mafrican leader ever to emerge from the continent.  He was able to unite most of the tribes against the Europeans who huddled in cities primarily along the southern coast and over the years a kind of status quo has emerged.  But you will learn much of this

There are currently three players in our campaign and we all go back many, many years.  Back to high school in fact.  Back in the eventful years of the Vietnam conflict.  back to the 1970's.  That is all you'll get as to hints as to our ages.  My name is Richard Court and I live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area in North Texas.  The other primary player is Larry Casey who resides in our hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada.  The third sometimes plalyer is Mark Templar, also of Las Vegas.  So there is our happy crew!

And now off on this, my first experience with a blog!